Using the quotes on this board is almost as hard as reading the Tascam manual
So this is in response to a few remarks above.
I've used mine in the field a few times. Not at festivals but rather at a local club with an outdoor stage. It's been carried around, travelled in cabs and even a bus once. Even felt a few raindrops once (that one got me a little worried) before I got it undercover. I'm more used to consumer products, this one certainly has a whole other buildfeel to it. I wouldn't worry more about using it in the field than any other product.
I haven't measured it but I would say that it's hard to go much under 30 seconds from stopping one recording to starting another on a different disc. With the 2 formats I'm likely to use you get 2h13m with 24/96 and 1h47m with DSD. Few bands play that long without an encore break. If they do and I would know in advance I would guess using 24/48 for +4h wouldn't be that bad.
I did my first couple of recordings via mics to DSD and the last one as 24/96. To be able to give copies to the band (of the DSD) I went analog out from the Tascam to the analog ins of my m-audio Firewire 410 (recording to 24/96). This of course requiered a realtime transfer. Doing 24/96 was obviously much easier. Just drag and drop the files from the computers DVD to the harddisk. Took about a minute.
Does anyone have a theoretical idea regarding the quality outcome of these two solutions? I suspect that the added quality from DSD vs 24/96 most likely is lost with the additional analog transfer. The CDs obviously doesn't sound as good as the DSD but neither does the CDs sound as good as the 24/96. Hard to tell what is lost in downgrading hte signal and what's lost in the transfer. What should/could I get to be able to make the best possible transfer of a DSD recording to a computer (wavelab etc, assuming there is no software handling DSD).